Gypsy Gold (3 page)

S
moke twisted up from a campfire. By its light, Sam saw a painted cart pulled onto a grassy strip next to a stream. A pinto horse stood nearby and a young man sat beside it, playing a violin.

He's serenading his horse,
Sam thought.
And who could blame him?

The mare might have stepped out of a fairy tale.

Thick forelock veiled a face that was half dark and half light. The mane draping her to the shoulder could have been a swath of night sky with a beam of starlight white running through its middle.

Tall and thickly muscled, the mare still looked cute, not intimidating—maybe because of the fuzzy black tufts showing inside her ears or the white hair
curling soft and fine above those massive hooves.

One of her hooves wouldn't fit inside my hat,
Sam thought.
It would flatten it.

The mare's sloping shoulders promised a smooth ride, and Sam pictured the horse carrying a runaway princess. In fact, the big black-and-white paint could carry a princess
and
a prince on her broad and gleaming back.

What a great horse,
Sam thought, and gave Ace a guilty pat on the neck, just in case he read her mind and felt jealous.

The mare watched the musician's bow stroke haunting music from his violin. Then, as the tempo built in liveliness, the paint nodded instead of clapping along.

The words of the song weren't easy to make out. Some might have been in another language, but after two repetitions, Sam could have sung along with the refrain.

“Gypsy gold does not clink and glitter, oh no. It gleams in the sun and neighs in the dark, ah yes.”

He really was singing to his horse, and the feeling he put into the words made Sam shiver. She cast a quick glance at Jen, but the firelight reflected on the lenses of her glasses made it hard to tell what she was thinking.

Was she as taken in by the music? Ace and Silly were, that was for sure, but Sam spotted one creature that wasn't captivated.

The colt was no more than six months old. His compact body and sturdy legs looked tawny dun.

When a breeze plucked sparks from the campfire and spun them over the colt's head, he snapped at them. When they drifted out of reach, he sneezed and switched his short tail in boredom, but an instant later he was darting around the paint mare, past the musician and out of the ring of light.

What had gotten into him? The colt was about Tempest's age and Sam knew that sometimes a jolt of high spirits just made young horses run for the joy of it.

Not this time, though.

Sam's eyes followed the colt as he crashed toward shifting shadows on the other side of the campfire.

Animals, Sam thought. Lots of them.

She caught the flow of manes and the flash of startled eyes.

Mustangs?

Fingers of firelight stretched far enough that Sam was pretty sure she made out coats of blood bay, black, and roan.

She could hardly believe her eyes. The Phantom's band was clustered in the cottonwood grove.

It wasn't that the herd was out of its territory. The horses had ranged between the La Charla River and Cowkiller Caldera before. But they were so close. The whole herd clustered no more than two dozen yards away from this stranger.

Sam's mind grappled with surprise while her eyes kept searching. She sorted through the forms of mares and half-grown colts until she found him.

The stallion stood apart from the others. If a drop of moon dew had fallen through the branches to land glowing in the grove, it wouldn't have been brighter than the Phantom. He shone silver in the dark woods.

Sam's breath caught, and without meaning to, her hand rose to press against her chest. Could extra blood surge through your heart at the sight of the horse you loved? To her, it felt like it could, but she didn't call to him. All she wanted was to watch him.

Tense, with every nerve alert, the silver stallion was poised to run, but he'd turned one ear toward the music.

Did the melody stir memories of the years he'd lived as a captive horse? Was that why he wasn't afraid of the stranger?

It wasn't the pinto mare that had lured the stallion. If it had been, he would have been staring and snorting. Instead, he listened.

Protector of his band, wild with his tangled mane and predator's eyes, every inch an untamed beast, the Phantom still couldn't resist the soaring notes.

Sam remembered Dallas, their ranch foreman, saying that when she'd been away in San Francisco, he'd sat on the bunkhouse steps at night, playing his harmonica. Sometimes, if he squinted just right, he'd seen a lonely horse listening as the music floated
across to the wild side of the river.

Sam knew the horse had been the Phantom. The stallion was so drawn by music, she'd once called him to her by singing an off-key and trembling Christmas carol.

The musician at the fireside gave no sign that he'd noticed his audience. He played on while the adventurous colt sidled among the mustangs. Then the enchantment ended.

Irritated squeals and snapping teeth drove the colt away. Hooves tramped, horsehide struck bark, and the little dun gave a high-pitched whinny.

“Poor baby,” Sam whispered.

Clumsy in his sad retreat, the colt bolted beyond the mustangs' reach and veered toward the campfire.

Watch out!
Sam's eyes had widened, but she hadn't managed to yell a warning when the violin bow slid screeching across the strings and the musician's out-flung arm blocked the colt.

Spooked, the colt wheeled away from the campfire and bucked, flinging his heels at the night sky. The mustangs trotted away, disturbed but not terrified. The pinto mare seemed quietly amused.

Without halter or hobbles, she stepped back from the colt's commotion and swung her heavy head to face Jen and Sam.

The mare's eyelashes were black on one side and white on the other. She looked like she was winking at them.

The musician retrieved his fallen instrument from the dirt, then stood, holding his violin and bow against his side, as he greeted them.

“Welcome to my camp.”

When he spoke, he looked younger.

Maybe eighteen or nineteen, Sam thought as she and Jen led their horses into the clearing.

“Hi,” she and Jen said together.

The guy watched with a calm smile that seemed more like his usual expression rather than anything to do with them.

He was medium height and had black hair that was mostly smooth with random curls behind his ears, brown-gold skin, and dark eyes with the longest lashes Sam had ever seen.

How much would he have been teased about that in school? Sam wondered.

Stop smiling,
Sam told herself. Remember the warnings pounded into your brain cells during Stranger Danger classes in elementary school.

Or take a lesson from Jen. She was acting polite but cautious.

But all Sam had to do was swing into Ace's saddle and she'd be out of here. Sure, they were out in the middle of Nevada late at night, but the guy's attention had already wandered back to his violin, checking it for scratches.

He cradled it like a baby before looking up at them to say, “I wondered when you would get here.”

“You knew we were coming?” Sam asked.

“Of course,” he said, inclining his head toward Ace and Silly.

“Two saddled and bridled horses?” Jen said, and now she did smile. “I guess it makes sense that someone would be coming after them.”

“Oh yeah,” Sam said, laughing at herself.

Then they just stood there: two girls with two horses, one guy with two horses.

Moving quickly to slip his violin inside his cart, the young man gestured for them to make themselves at home.

“My name is Nicolas Raykov,” he said, shaking each girl's hand. “I'm driving from Seattle to Sacramento with my partner Lace.”

Nicolas had no accent, but Sam heard a formal cadence in his words. She didn't take time to analyze it.

“That must be seven hundred miles,” Jen said, before she introduced herself.

“Eight hundred, if you don't count detours,” Nicolas said.

“The weather's going to be changing soon,” Sam warned.

Lots of people thought Nevada's high desert was hot all the time. In fact, it was so changeable, she'd learned not to assume the seasons meant anything.

“It already is,” Nicolas said. “But I've planned for it. We'll be in Sacramento before the snows fly.” He gave his mare's neck a hearty pat. “I've promised Lace.”

Then, just after Sam and Jen had introduced themselves and their horses, Ace raked his teeth across the feed pack tied on behind Silly's saddle.

With an offended squeal, Silly raised a hind leg, swished her tail, and bared her teeth at the bay gelding.

“Ace!” Sam tugged at the reins, pulling her horse's head away.

Amazed at Silly's short-tempered response, Jen apologized to Nicolas. “They're hungry. We'd better feed them before they get into a real squabble.”

“Please, help yourself to some hay. Lace is quite generous,” Nicolas said, “and I have plenty of food to share with you, as well.”

“They carried their own food,” Jen explained as she unpacked. “And we have dinner with us.”

It wasn't much of a dinner, but Sam didn't say so.

Jen had insisted on bringing a canned meal of beans with hot dogs cut up in them and she wanted to eat them cold, right out of the can, accompanied only by soda crackers. The idea grossed Sam out, but Jen had said it was what she'd eaten with her dad when they'd gone on pack trips into the mountains. She'd insisted it was a meal fit for real cowgirls. Sam couldn't make herself agree, but before they'd left, she'd had a stern talk with herself. Since it was only one dinner out of her entire life, she could go along with her best friend.

Jen was uncharacteristically clumsy with the can
opener, probably because she was watching Nicolas while she fumbled with it. Sam couldn't stop glancing at him, either. Something about Nicolas and Lace made Sam imagine they'd come into this clearing out of another time.

Finally, Jen got the can open, and Sam was hungry enough that the beans tasted fine. Afterward, Nicolas boiled water and served them hot mint tea. Sipping it as she sat on a rock near the campfire, Sam felt almost at home.

Jen swept a few twigs and leaves aside to clear a seat on the ground and leaned her back against a boulder. Nicolas sat across from them, on the other side of the fire. Lace wandered loose around the camp, touching noses with Ace and Silly.

“She is so friendly,” Sam marveled.

“Good old Lace,” Nicolas said proudly. At once, the mare's head swung to look at him. “You like the company, don't you, girl?” To Sam and Jen, he added, “It's been just the two of us for over a month.”

“Don't you mean three?” Jen asked. She pointed to the colt peering from under Lace's neck.

“Him? That little one's not an official member of our caravan. He fell in with us about two weeks ago, between—” Nicolas paused. He seemed to be mentally retracing their journey. “Good Thunder Meadows and Susanville.”

Good Thunder Meadows had a familiar ring to it, but Sam couldn't decide why.

“He's awfully young to be on his own,” Jen said.

“We searched for his mother,” Nicolas said. “There'd been a lightning storm and I feared…”

Nicolas glanced toward the colt, then shrugged. Sam and Jen understood his hint that the foal's mother might have been killed by lightning.

“Hmm,” Jen said, and Sam guessed her scowl was for whoever had failed to keep track of the vulnerable young animal.

“I talked with a sheepherder, two days north of here, who called him a ‘bummer' foal. He suggested the colt was orphaned and had fallen in with some mustangs and just sneaked meals from whichever mares would have him.”

Sam had heard of bummer calves and lambs, but never a bummer colt.

“From what we just saw,” Jen said, gesturing to the spot where the Phantom's herd had been, “that seems unlikely.”

“I don't know,” Sam said, trying to take the sting out of Jen's remark. “Those wild mares wouldn't make it easy for an outsider because he's old enough to be weaned. But when he was younger, they might have fed him. Remember Mistress Mayhem?”

Jen had picked up a twig and she took her time examining the autumn leaves that still clung to it before she nodded.

“A friend of ours has a colt that was temporarily adopted by a burro,” Sam explained to Nicolas, but
there was something else about the dun colt, all alone on the range, that started a niggling thought in her brain.

“Lace is tolerant when he noses around her flank, but he was very disappointed to find she couldn't be his nursemaid. Still, he seems to have found enough food to get by.”

Sam wanted a good look at the colt, but he stayed flat against the paint's black-and-white barrel. No matter where she wandered, he pressed to the side farthest from the people.

Jen tossed the twig she'd been twirling toward the fire.

“What do you call him?” Jen asked.

“He's not mine to name.” Nicolas sounded surprised. “I hope he'll go back to the wild ones, because soon we'll be trotting along the roadside, with traffic buzzing by.”

Recalling the colt's heedless rush across the clearing, Sam hoped so, too.

“You're right. We're not far from the highway,” Sam said.

“Or home,” Jen added pointedly.

“Yeah,” Sam said, but she wasn't sure she had enough energy to ride the rest of the way tonight.

While Jen explained the purpose of their trip and the unplanned “adventure” of the last eight hours, she picked up another stick and poked the leafy twig the rest of the way into the campfire.

The leaves burned with a hiss while Sam thought of cuddling down in her own bed.

Nicolas seemed as interested in turkey vultures as Jen, until a coyote's howl nearby made him turn away.