Gypsy Gold

Samantha Forster lay on her back in the warm grass and gazed at a cloud Pegasus. Drifts of white made up the mane and tail and gray-edged clumps looked like muscular shoulders. If not for the cloud wings trimmed with sun gold, he'd look like the Phantom.

The mustang stallion could be watching from a nearby ridge or peering through a screen of pinion pines. Sam lay totally still, wishing he'd appear.

Sam's jeans felt hot against her legs. Her head was pillowed on her jacket. Her outspread arms were bare to the green shoots poking up between the brittle
autumn grass left uneaten by deer, antelope, or wild horses over the summer.

Why hadn't the cold nighttime temperatures kept the baby grass from pushing up from the warm darkness of the dirt? Why didn't the grass have more sense than to explore where its tender tips would be frozen off any night now?

Sam smiled and closed her eyes. She basked in the sun's warmth and studied the scarlet network of veins crisscrossing the inside of her eyelids. She must be half asleep if she was actually asking herself why grass didn't have the sense to stay underground.

Right now, though, being half asleep was a good thing. She'd promised her best friend, Jen Kenworthy, that she'd play dead for at least an hour.

The two girls had ridden out from River Bend Ranch on Ace and Silly after school the day before.

Armed with a hand-drawn map from Jen's Advanced Biology teacher, the girls had searched for the turkey vultures' roost yesterday on an offshoot of the trail up to Cowkiller Caldera. At dusk, they'd found a tree filled with the black birds.

“Oh, yeah!” Jen had rejoiced and her excitement had electrified her palomino. She'd had to turn the mare in circles to keep her from bolting. Once her mount had settled, Jen had whispered, “We'll be back in the morning.”

Grinning without opening her eyes, Sam recalled that Jen hadn't been talking to her. Only her best
friend would make a promise to turkey vultures.

They'd turned their horses around, walked back down the hillside, and pitched camp far enough away that they wouldn't disturb the birds.

Jen had researched turkey vultures and come to the conclusion that they were totally misunderstood. She'd vowed to do firsthand research for her project so that she didn't repeat any other scientists' mistakes. That firsthand research included luring the birds near enough that she could sketch them.

Now Jen and Sam were lying still as corpses, hoping a curious turkey vulture would actually land beside them and hop close enough to satisfy its curiosity.

“They have such good senses of smell, they'll know we're not dead,” Jen whispered beside her.

Sam rolled her eyes as far to the left as she could without moving her head. She saw blond braids and a tanned face, but Jen's lips didn't seem to move.

“Won't smell rotten enough,” Sam joked.

“Sam,” Jen said patiently, “they only eat freshly dead things.”

“I didn't know buzzards were so picky,” Sam teased.

“There are no buzzards in the United States,” Jen hissed. “Now we have to hush. Any minute, they could fly off for South America. This flock is rare. It could be the one that stays in Nevada through October.”

Sam pressed her lips together, telling herself this flock of turkey vultures wasn't the only thing that was rare. She'd bet there weren't two other teenagers in the country getting their pre-Halloween thrills by offering themselves as bird bait.

Still, Sam was glad Jen had coaxed her into sharing these peaceful moments.

Sam's life had been hamster-on-a-wheel crazy since she'd moved back to northern Nevada from San Francisco. She never would have thought of soaking up October sunshine in a meadow that would soon be blasted by winter storms.

This was a great escape after almost a month of being grounded.

For four long weeks she'd done what she was toldâmorning chores, school, afternoon chores, and homeworkâover and over again. She'd learned her lesson this time. She wouldn't do anything to make Dad, Gram, and Brynna worry. Although sometimes it was impossible to tell what would set them off.

Her only fun during those long weeks had come from perfecting her bareback riding skills on her bay mustang Ace.

Since she wasn't allowed to leave the ranch on horseback, she'd sat on him in the corral, trying to find a perfect balance that didn't involve squeezing her legs and accidentally sending him forward.

One afternoon Dallas, River Bend's foreman, had finally asked, “You gonna roost on that horse all night?”

It had sounded like heaven to Sam. What could be cozier than spending the night on Ace, leaning forward with her arms around his neck and her cheek leaning against his mane?

She and Ace had come a long way together since she'd returned from San Francisco. She'd come home a totally timid rider. If she was a cowgirl now, Ace got most of the credit. He'd tricked and bullied her until she knew that if she didn't take charge, he would.

He'd never be a push-button horse, but she loved him with all her heart.

Sam sighed. Jen shushed her again.

Sam raised her eyelashes a tenth of a millimeter and saw three turkey vultures riding the air currents above her.

Cross-shaped black bodies circled, mimicking Sam's own position. Except, in place of arms, they had wide, prehistoric-looking wings. Sam wanted to believe they were just as afraid of her as she was of them, but what if the vultures really mistook her for a dead thing?

It could happen. She remembered a Thanksgiving when she was a little kid, when she'd mistaken a plastic grape for the real thing.

Gram had arranged the pretty red plastic grapes in a Thanksgiving cornucopia. Sam had snatched one and chomped down on it before anyone caught her ruining the centerpiece. With the plastic burning her taste buds, Sam had spit it out. Then her sense of
betrayal had turned to anger.

What if the vultures swooped in for brunch, discovered she was faking, then grabbed her with their talons and pecked out her eyes?

“Quit freaking out,” Jen hissed.

“I'm not,” Sam answered.

“Okay,” Jen breathed, but those two syllables managed to say Jen was not convinced.

Sam reminded herself she loved animals. All animals.

Vultures just did what they were born to do. Sure they stuck their heads and necks inside dead bodies, but Jen claimed turkey vultures also spent three hours a day cleaning their feathersâpreening, she'd called it.

Sam and Jen had agreed that was a lot longer than either of them ever spent trying to look pretty.

Sam forced air from her lungs and tried to lie flatter. She felt the bumps of the herringbone braid Jen had plaited into her hair this morning, and the tickle of what might be ant feet crossing the nape of her neck, but she lay still.

In the quiet, she heard her shirt move with her breath, then listened as a horse blew through his lips.

Down the hillside, Ace and Silly were getting restless.

Jen had packed into the wilderness with horses more often than Sam, so when Jen insisted on feeding the horses hay instead of grain so they wouldn't
be pumped up with energy and dig holes at the campsite, they'd done it. When Jen pointed out that maps and memories could be faulty and they should water the horses every time there was a chance, they'd done that, too.

Only Jen's decision to tie Ace and Silly to a picket line instead of hobbling them made Sam uneasy. She loved Jen's palomino, Silk Stockings, but there was a reason the mare's nickname was Silly.

Still, the horses had stayed tied all night and all morning while Jen cooked a skillet full of biscuits.

Talk about preening! Sam thought. Jen had brought along premade biscuits just in case hers didn't work out, but it turned out she didn't need them.

Using her mom's cast-iron skillet, Jen had cooked up crisp, golden biscuits that were tender in the middle and delicious.

As Sam thought of the extra biscuits they'd wrapped up and saved for lunch, her stomach growled. Apparently that didn't bother the vultures.

A faint coolness made Sam's eyes spring open. One of the turkey vultures had moved closer. It glided near enough that she saw its head tilt.

That bird knew very well she wasn't dead meat, but it wanted to see what she was.

Pop!

At the sound, all three birds rose higher into the sky.

A horse squealed.

Pop! Pop!

Sitting up, Jen gasped, “Were those shots?”

“I don't know.” Sam lurched to her feet, heart pounding.

They weren't shots. Of course they weren't.

She wet her lips and stared at Jen. Behind her glasses, Jen's eyes were wide and worried.

“Should we go see?” Jen asked.

Her uncertainty surprised Sam. Jen was a rancher's daughter and a cowgirl to the bone. Still, Jen was sensible. She wanted sufficient information before she made a move.

They both listened hard.

“If it was a gun, going toward it is the last thing we shouldâ” Sam's voice broke off at the thudding of hooves.

Their horses were loose!

Something clattered, rolled, and shattered. Metal rang from impact and then the sound of hoofbeats faded.

“Let's go!” Jen shouted.

Grabbing her jacket, Sam broke into a run and Jen matched her steps.

Beyond the pounding of their feet, the girls could still hear the hooves.

“They're running away,” Jen said in a wondering tone.

Sam took longer strides as she yelled in agreement, “And it's a long walk home!”

The campsite was weirdly quiet.

The horses were gone. Running after them and shouting for them to stop would only make them gallop farther and faster.

Together, Sam and Jen stood, hands on hips, and looked around the clearing.

It was easy to see what had happened. The carefully strung picket line snaked across the campsite, pulled down by the spooked horses before they trampled the sleeping bags.

Sam bent to retrieve her sleeping bag. Hooves had flung it into the dead campfire.

“Do you know how glad I am we doused the fire before leaving?” Sam muttered. She shook out the sleeping bag and brushed at the smear left by charred sticks and ashes, but then she shuddered.

If they'd left the campfire burning after breakfast, the sleeping bag could have been kicked into the embers by the horses, and blazed into flames. Fire could have spread to Jen's sleeping bag, then to their supplies. The whole hillside might have caught fire.

The handle had shattered off Jen's blue pottery mug, but her mom's skillet was where she'd left it, propped against a rock to dry after she'd washed it. Alongside the skillet were their stacked tin plates.

In fact, only three thingsâthe picket line, sleeping bag, and cupâwere out of place. The campsite looked pretty orderly except for the white ooze.

“The biscuits,” Jen moaned. She pointed at the foil-wrapped tubes, which had split open to let sticky dough escape.

“Refrigerated biscuits,” Sam corrected, and they both threw their hands up in disbelief.

Why hadn't one of them thought of this before? Kept cool, the dough waited quietly in those tubes. But the morning sun had heated through the cardboard. The dough inside had risen, expanded, and popped the tubes open.

“At least it wasn't gunshots,” Jen said.

Sam nodded. Last month's encounter with a rifle was enough to last a lifetime. She'd faced a horse rustler with a gun and she never wanted to do it again.

The memory made her hands tremble. She inhaled a shaky breath and sat down on a boulder.

“Are you okay?” Jen asked, examining her with an analytical stare.

“I will be,” Sam said.

She concentrated on the scent of lingering campfire smoke and the herbal freshness of the pinion trees. Gram and her church friends had harvested pinion pine nuts just last weekend. Gram had been toasting them in the oven when Sam had returned home from school the day before yesterday.

The remembered scent made Sam's pulse settle down.

“Sorry,” Sam said, looking up at Jen.

Her friend waved the apology away.

“Go ahead and rest.” Jen meant it, but she was striding around camp, picking things up and arranging them in her backpack. “I have to go after Silly. I don't know what she'll do out there.”

Jen's palomino mare was a ranch horse. Beautiful, strong, and surprisingly sensible in parades, she was used to sharing pastures and corrals with the other Kenworthy palominosânot running wild.

And no matter how much Jen joked about her horse being neurotic, they loved each other.

As soon as Jen had crawled out of her sleeping bag that morning, the mare had fussed for her touch. When Jen had drawn near enough, Silly had rested her head on Jen's shoulder and left it there, eyes peaceful as Jen stoked her.

Now, Jen knelt to roll up her sleeping bag. She wasn't about to wait for the horses to return. She was breaking camp.

“I thinkâ” Sam broke off, shaking her head.

“Yes?” Jen asked, pausing.

“I wonder which one of them will lead.” Sam gestured down the trail. “They both know the way home.”

As Jen mulled that over, Sam thought about Ace.
She didn't blame her horse for taking off when she wasn't there to tell him not to, but really, he'd been through police horse desensitization training and tolerated all kinds of weird stuff. Why would he panic at the sound of popping dough?

She thought of the snort she'd heard earlier. Ace had been ready to move on.

If she'd been standing here, holding his reins, turning him to look toward the sound, allowing him to study its source with both eyes, he would have stayed. But she'd been up the hill, so he'd taken the excuse to flee, leaving her afoot.

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