voice at the barn door made us both jump. “What are you two doing back there?” Fran stood leaning in the doorway. How long had she been there? What had she heard?
I scurried out of the stall like a pack rat caught in the lantern light. I hauled Jasper behind me by his sleeve.
“Nothing, just talking where nobody can spy on us.” I squinted hard at her. “What do you want?” I held my breath while she craned her skinny neck to peer over my shoulder to the back of the barn.
“Pa said to see if you did your homework and if you didn’t you need to come in right now and do it.”
“Tell him I’ll be in in a minute,” I said.
“Whatever.” Fran had delivered her message and turned on her heel and headed back to the house. I guess us kids bored her enough that she couldn’t be bothered to snoop any closer.
Jasper exhaled when the back door slammed behind her. “That was close.”
“Yep.” Too close. I didn’t like it. “I better get inside. See you on the bus tomorrow.”
“Adios.” Jasper whistled, “Come on, Willie.” The big black dog whined and gave a couple more scratches at the pack-rat hole. Jasper tugged gently at the old blind dog’s collar. “Nothing wrong with your sniffer, is there?” he said. “Come on home now. That old rat’ll be there next time you come, I promise.”
“Hey, Cass?” Jasper untied Tigger from the corral fence. “I don’t suppose Willie can come, can he?”
I thought about it. Willie was an amazing dog, but he was precious to both of us.
“I don’t think so. Too dangerous. A blind dog up in that rugged country? He’ll be safer staying at home with your folks.”
“Right.” Jasper looked at his dog, the one he’d waited so long for and worked so hard to get. I knew it pained him to leave Willie behind. But again he agreed, “Right, too dangerous.”
I watched him swing into the saddle and start up the hill with Willie trailing at Tigger’s heels. Just two more days and we’d be riding the other way, up into the mountains. We’d find the herd and come riding home as heroes.
I held that vision in my mind: come heck or high water, snow or sleet or bandits or whatever, we’d bring back the herd and save the ranch.
Chapter 5
As we rode out Saturday morning, I swung my feet clear of the stirrups and tipped my hat down to shade my eyes from the sun just rising over the peaks. It was 6:00 A.M. Funny how hard it was to get up for school and how easy it was to jump out of bed to start on an adventure.
We’d finally decided on the “camping at the river” excuse, because it gave us a reason to disappear for the whole weekend and to take the horses with us.
We’d tricked our folks with that excuse once before, when we rescued the horse Glory in the middle of the night. For a while after that “incident,” as Pa calls it, it took some convincing to get permission to stay out overnight again. But twice since that night, we’d camped at the river and come home without stealing a horse. So, I guess you could say that our folks hadn’t learned their lesson yet, and they let us go.
Pa had only glanced up from his paper when I’d asked him. “A little cold at night for sleeping out, isn’t it?” he’d said.
“We like it.” I didn’t look him in the eye, but fiddled with the fishing fly I’d been tying at the kitchen table. “No mosquitoes, lots of stars.”
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