Gypsy Gold (5 page)

T
he yapping of coyotes led them to a ridge that overlooked clumps of sagebrush surrounding small, flat places Sam thought of as deer beds.

No deer slept here tonight.

Just as Nicolas had said, coyotes were dancing by starlight.

Gray-brown fur rippled as the coyotes took turns chasing each other. A mother streaked after a half-grown pup. He hurdled over a rock with something in his mouth. The mother cut around the rock at such a speedy slant, her claws scrabbled to hold her upright. The pup circled back. Tongue flying from the corner of her mouth, his mother sprinted after him, moving so fast, she hardly touched the ground.

Coyote tag,
Sam thought. Even if they weren't exactly dancing, they played, with no idea humans were watching.

Panting, the pup dropped what he'd held clamped in his teeth and his mother snapped it up. She ran, dropped it to taunt the pup, then dragged it out of his reach. Snapping, he lunged after her, and Sam got a better look at the prize he couldn't wait to recapture.

The thing they tugged and traded was some sort of long-dead, half-eaten creature.

Yuck,
Sam thought. This gave new meaning to the idea of playing with your food.

Abruptly, their game turned serious. The female stood with forelegs straddling the mangled treasure. Ears back, she bared her teeth. The fur on her muzzle wrinkled and showed white fangs.

As the pup approached with his head held lower than his shoulders, Sam noticed the light fluffy fur showing like a ruff on his chest.

Tail wagging near to the ground, the pup pretended to be submissive. Mouth open, head turned to one side, he crept toward his mother on bent legs.

Don't hurt me,
he seemed to say, but the instant his mother stopped snarling and her upright tail relaxed, he grabbed the scrap. Rejoicing, the pup tossed it into the air.

Sam's fingers itched for a camera. How cool would it be to keep these images forever? She was
staring harder, trying to engrave the scene on her brain cells, when barking exploded like applause from the brush down below.

That sounded doggish,
Sam thought. In fact, the barks could have been from her dog, Blaze. While she tried to make sense of the sounds, Blaze himself suddenly bounded into the clearing.

She braced herself for a fight, but that hadn't been Blaze's intruder bark. He woofed a greeting at the coyote and her pup.

Sam didn't say a word, but suddenly it all made sense.

She knew where the Border collie had gone all those nights he'd slipped away.

She knew what he'd been longing for as he howled in the moonlight.

The adult coyote was Blaze's mate—and that must be his puppy.

Blaze trotted to the spot where the pup stood guard over the lump of fur. The pup growled, but Blaze ignored his sassiness and chattered little love bites on his back.

It was a display of dominance, but in the sweetest possible way.

It took Jen a few seconds longer to recognize the Border collie, but when she did her intake of breath sounded like ripping cloth.

Suddenly still, the canines tested the air. Then,
though no sign of agreement passed among them, they fled in a rippling run through the night and out of sight.

“That was your dog playing with the coyotes,” Jen said, marveling at what she'd seen.

“No,” Nicolas said. “You're just trying to trick the city kid. He had to be wild.”

“That was Blaze,” Sam agreed.

“Wow,” Jen went on, “so the pup must be a coydog.”

Coydog.
Sam turned the word over in her mind, pretty sure she'd never heard it before. It was obvious what it meant, but was a coydog a wild predator or did it come when it was called and lick your face “hello”?

“I don't know anything about coydogs. Do you?” Sam asked, and she noticed that Nicolas's face lost its skeptical look as she consulted Jen.

Jen was thinking. Hands folded together with only the index fingers sticking up, tapping against her lips. Because she planned to be a vet, Jen studied animal behavior and she remembered everything she read.

“Not much.” Jen shook her head. “Dad told me they didn't really exist—but obviously he was wrong.”

Sam thought about the pup's markings, the coyotes' excitement as Blaze popped out of the brush, and the way he'd joined them.

“Maybe,” Sam began, but no more words came to her. There was just no other way to put those puzzle pieces together. The three were a family.

“It's no coincidence,” Jen assured Sam. “I've tried thinking about it from different angles, and though Dad told me coyotes would lure dogs away from home by pretending to play with them while the rest of the pack circled up to attack—”

“That was no trap,” Sam finished for her.

Lace pawed the dirt in impatience. Sam reached down to pat the pinto's shoulder. Jen reached back and gave the mare a good scratch at the base of her tail.

“I don't mean to brag, but did you notice how she reacted to all that excitement?” Nicolas asked.

“She's great,” Sam answered, but she didn't say much more as they returned to the campsite. She couldn't stop thinking of Blaze and the coyotes until an unfamiliar word pulled her back into the conversation.

“…figured out why I feel an affinity with them,” Nicolas was telling Jen.

“Why?” Jen asked. “Don't tell me you eat road-kill and howl at the moon.”

“Jen! Now who's being rude?” Sam looked over her shoulder and into Jen's grinning face.

“Rarely,” Nicolas teased back, “but there's a European youth group for gypsies called the Coyotes.”

“Cool. What do they do?” Jen asked.

While Sam waited for Jen to make another joke, Nicolas strode on ahead, still talking. “Who knows?” he said. “I'd never heard of them until my mom told me not to get mixed up with them. Seeing those coyotes, though…” Nicolas's voice trailed off and Sam didn't know him well enough to even guess what he was wishing. “Good thing I'm keeping a journal,” he said with a sigh. “I need to write some stuff down.”

 

Back in camp, Sam and Jen unrolled their sleeping bags near the fire.

“Good night, Ace,” Sam called to her horse.

“'Night, Silly,” Jen told her palomino.

“Let me know if you need anything.” Nicolas's voice came muffled from inside the caravan wagon.

He's doing his best to give us privacy,
Sam thought.

She tried not to imagine what Dad would say if he could see her now. Without a doubt, he'd disapprove.

Not because Nicolas was a gypsy, Sam thought, but because he was a stranger.

Gram and Brynna would probably agree with Dad, though she couldn't picture either of them caring that Nicolas was a gypsy either.

“After all our walking,” Jen muttered as she wiggled down in her sleeping bag, “you'd think I'd be sore, but I'm just sleepy.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, but she wasn't sleepy. Her thoughts bounced like a ping-pong ball as she won
dered how people would react to a gypsy wagon rumbling through Darton County.

Sam couldn't guess what Dallas, Pepper, and Ross would think about Nicolas. The cowboys would see him as an outsider, but he was good to his horse. Predicting Linc Slocum's reaction was easy. He criticized other people, hoping no one noticed he was the real problem. Jake would be cool with Nicolas and so would Sam's family. Gram's friend Mrs. Allen liked teenagers. Besides, she was preoccupied right now with her fiancé and their plans for a new program at Blind Faith Mustang Sanctuary.

Nicolas's grandparents had warned him about racism, and though Sam wished people had progressed past that, she knew they hadn't.

Sam twisted onto her other side, turning her face away from the fire's heat.

For most of her childhood, she'd thought all racists were nasty, bad-smelling people, because of one ugly moment. Not long after Mom had died, Jake's family had taken Sam to the fair. Looking back, Sam knew they were trying to distract her from Dad's grief and her own confusion, but she'd been having fun. She didn't even remember Jake protesting when his parents ordered him to hold hands with her so she wouldn't get lost.

The trouble had begun when a man tried to cut between them.

First, Sam had noticed his unwashed smell. Next,
his paper plate of greasy food had dropped from his hands. She and Jake had jumped back, looked up at a man's angry face.

“I hanker for fried liver all year long, and because of you”—he'd snarled at Jake—“you little red—”

Sam told herself she didn't remember what he'd said next, but the man's head had jutted toward Jake. His eyes had squinted, and his open, sneering mouth made her fear he was about to spit. At them.

“Sam!”

Startled, she rolled over to see that Jen had risen up on one elbow. “Are you having a nightmare?”

It took a few seconds, but finally Sam said, “Yeah, sort of.”

“You're okay,” Jen said drowsily.

Sam sighed, and as she fell asleep she couldn't help wishing all bad people wore a stink. That way, it would be easier to identify them and keep them out of your life.

T
he first thing Sam saw when she opened her eyes the next morning was the black-and-white face of Lace.

Breathing sweet hay breath and plucking at Sam's hair with her nimble lips, the mare inspected her.

“Hello, pretty girl,” Sam mumbled, and when she raised her hand to touch the mare's gleaming black cheek, Lace didn't pull away.

The colt beside her did, though, and the skitter of his hooves woke Sam the rest of the way.

Yawning, she crawled out of her sleeping bag and noticed Jen, standing at the back of the gypsy wagon, watching herself in a suspended mirror as she braided her hair.

Jen must have caught Nicolas's reflection as he approached, because she didn't look away from the mirror as she said, “Ah, he cooks.”

“No, but I boil water,” Nicolas said as he handed Jen a brown mug, “and my mom believes a strong cup of English tea can put any trouble right.”

Sam listened to their voices as she sat on her sleeping bag, but she turned her attention to her feet.

This was the kind of frosty fall morning Gram liked. She said it had “snap.”

In Sam's opinion, it had
teeth
. Cold gnawed through her shirt and jeans. It nibbled on her fingers, making her so shivery and uncoordinated, she couldn't hold her boot still to aim her socked foot into it.

Nicolas's knuckles were red as if he'd scrubbed them, but Sam was more interested in the steam curling up from the mug he offered her. Spiced with the aroma of oranges, the tea beckoned her to drink. Sam almost tipped the mug in her eagerness to grab it.

She sipped and swallowed. The hot drink thawed her windpipe, fingers, and brain.

Feeling more awake, Sam set the cup aside to pull on her second boot. She pushed her hair back from her eyes, tucked it neatly behind her ears, and looked at Nicolas.

He held a box of cold cereal and bowls, but a minute ago he'd said something that had nothing to do with breakfast. Something about tea and trouble?

“Are we in trouble?” Sam asked.

“That depends,” Nicolas answered. “Is it hunting season?”

Still braiding her hair, Jen answered, “No. Why?”

“I heard a gunshot.”

“You're sure?” Jen said. Her fingers stilled on her half braid.

“Pretty sure,” Nicolas confirmed.

Sam's pulse kicked into high gear at the mention of gunfire.

Knock it off,
Sam told herself, but it was too late. Blood pumped through her veins so crazily, she could count each thump.

There's no reason for this,
Sam thought, taking a deep breath.

Even though she'd always been a little afraid of guns, her own father had a rifle rack in his truck.

There were lots of harmless reasons for gunfire. Weren't there?

Sam tried really hard to think of one.

Nicolas didn't act worried. He doused the campfire and he couldn't have heard much past its hiss.

Sam chewed quietly as they ate a cold cereal breakfast topped with watery powdered milk. She paid attention to the sounds around her as she saddled Ace, but only heard birdsong and the rush of the small stream.

She was probably worrying for no reason, but she noticed Jen wasn't keeping up her usual chatter to Silly as she saddled her.

Nicolas only clucked his tongue as he fastened Lace's harness and backed her between the shafts of his cart. Sam had almost decided he'd forgotten the shots.

Then, he said, “I'll see you two back as far as civilization, then I'll be off.”

Nicolas used a small fold-up shovel to turn the campfire ashes into the soil. He glanced around for anything he might have misplaced or left behind.

“Civilization means my house—River Bend Ranch,” Sam said. “And that won't take you far off the main road.”

If not for the gunshots, she might have told him not to bother riding the extra miles with them, because Nicolas was on a tight schedule.

Last night, he'd described his carefully planned journey. Sam had tried not to let her eyes glaze over from hearing all the details, but Jen had been so fascinated, Nicolas had retrieved his journal from the wagon.

“Is it written in code?” Jen had asked, peering over Nicolas's shoulder as he read his exact mileage to date.

“Not exactly.” He'd laughed, then turned his journal so that Sam could see the squiggly marks interspersed with neat black printing. “It's shorthand. Before my parents' business took off, we lived in this teeny apartment and Mom had an old electric type-
writer, a Gregg Shorthand chart, and a desk in a corner of the kitchen. She taught herself to be a secretary, but my sister and I learned shorthand and slipped each other notes no one else could decipher.”

Since they were only children, Sam and Jen had told Nicolas how much they envied him, but he'd laughed. “That's because you don't know my sister.”

Later, he'd shown them his camping permits, his backup plans for detours and delays, and explained how hard it would be on Lace if they encountered an autumn snowstorm.

Nicolas regretted spending two nights, instead of one, in this “mustang camp.” He'd hoped they'd be far enough south to avoid harsh weather when it came.

Sam glanced skyward. Mounded like white cotton candy, the clouds didn't look threatening.

“I know my Gram will insist on feeding you,” Sam told Nicolas, “so plan on staying for lunch.”

“I don't know,” Nicolas said. “I want to reach Darton tomorrow.”

“You'll make up the time by not eating for the next two days,” Jen told Nicolas. “Believe me, I'll be staying, too. Sam's grandmother is the best cook in the county.”

“Well, maybe,” Nicolas began.

“And Brynna should take a look at the colt,” Jen said.

“Why?” Nicolas asked. Suddenly the line of suspicion above his left eyebrow was back. “Nothing's wrong with him.”

Sam jumped in to explain. “It's just that Brynna—my stepmother—works for the BLM—”

“That would be, the Bureau of something?” Nicolas asked.

“The Bureau of Land Management, and—”

“I have all my paperwork,” Nicolas broke in.

“Wait,” Sam said. Why was Nicolas being so prickly? “The Bureau of Land Management is in charge of wild horses, not just land.”

“Go on,” Nicolas said after a few seconds.

“And Brynna is the manager of Willow Springs Wild Horse Center. She's a biologist and she wouldn't care about your paperwork unless you were doing something destructive—”

“Which you're not,” Jen put in.

“Right,” Sam said, “but Brynna is a wild horse expert. She might know what's up with your little tagalong.”

Sam almost bit her tongue for sounding so cutesy, but the words had just come tumbling out as she tried to get Nicolas to settle down and trust her.

“I won't let anything bad happen to that colt,” she added without thinking.

“Believe her,” Jen said, slinging an arm around Sam's shoulders. “Ninety-nine point nine percent of the trouble Sam gets in is over wild horses. She loves
them more than she loves her family and friends.”

Jen gave a tragic sigh and let her head plop down on her friend's shoulder.

Sam rolled her eyes and Nicolas laughed, but then he said, “I've heard about the pens where they take wild horses they round up.”

Sam followed Nicolas's gaze as he looked at the dun colt. Bored with all their talking, the colt had folded his legs and nodded into a nap.

“I know I can't keep him, but I wish he could stay free.”

“Maybe that's not what he wants,” Jen said, adjusting her glasses on the bridge of her nose. “After all, he joined up with you.”

“He joined up with Lace,” Nicolas corrected her. “He hasn't let me touch him.”

Sam sighed. Each time she'd reached for the little dun, he'd skittered away, but she'd thought it was because he didn't know her.

“He could belong to someone,” Sam suggested. “And Brynna knows how to look him over for brands, tattoos, microchips, and all that stuff.”

“Something could have happened to his mother and he just wandered off on his own.” Jen looked thoughtful for a moment. “Maybe his owner's posted a reward for—”

“I don't want a reward,” Nicolas interrupted.

“Okay, we'll take it!” Jen said, but she shot a quick sideways glance at Nicolas.

“I don't want anyone to be suspicious,” he explained. “I let him follow us because he wanted to, not because—”

“We're not suspicious and Brynna won't be, either,” Sam said flatly. “We've had lots of experience with horse thieves—”

“Oh, good,” Nicolas moaned.

“—and you're not one,” Sam finished.

Nicolas fixed her with a look that said she couldn't possibly know that for sure, but Sam held up her hand.

“I know what I know,” she insisted. Then she folded her arms and nodded.

“Forsters are notoriously stubborn,” Jen pretended to whisper to Nicolas. “We might as well mount up and go. If you try to talk her out of it, we'll be here all day.”

Minutes later, two riders, one caravan wagon, and a skipping foal trotted out into the autumn morning. The crunch and thud of hooves crossing orange and yellow leaves made their passage a celebration.

This was a lot better than lying in the dry grass waiting for vultures to swoop down for a peek, Sam thought, and she was pretty sure she didn't have any Sunday night homework.

When the horses settled into a walk, Nicolas took out his violin and played a jig he called traveling music.

Once, from the corner of her eye, Sam thought
she caught movement. She halted Ace and swung him around, backtracking in case the Phantom had followed, but she didn't spot the stallion.

Surely his instincts would keep him away during the daylight, no matter how much he liked Nicolas's songs. Especially if someone was firing a gun.

Sam reined Ace back onto the path. In a few steps he'd caught up with Silly and Jen.

They'd been on the trail for almost an hour when they heard another shot.

Sam and Jen drew rein. Lace snorted and stopped. She reached her chin over the colt's crest, pulling him close.

“Definitely a gunshot,” Jen said.

“But what's that?” Nicolas asked.

Dry grass crackled as something crashed through it.

An animal, Sam thought. Was it fleeing the gunman?

“It's the coydog,” Nicolas said.

Sam's breath caught. She twisted in the saddle and noticed Nicolas, sitting high on the wagon's driver's seat, had a better view. Could he really see—

The horses shied as a patchwork coat of coyote gray and white showed through the brush. The pup streaked closer, then sensed the horses and humans, and changed course.

Sam stood in her stirrups, searching for more swaying grasses that would show her that the female
coyote and Blaze were with the pup, but she saw nothing.

The pup was doing okay on his own. Fleet and determined, he kept running. For a baby, he was doing a great job. He'd outdistance whatever followed him.

But why was he alone?