Cassie and Jasper. Bryn Fleming

week before the trip, we gathered up the camping gear and extra horse tack and stashed it in an empty stall in the back corner of our barn where no one would see it.

      In my room, I stuffed clothes into my backpack, watching over my shoulder for Fran or my pa the whole time. Jeans, T-shirt, flannel shirt, boot socks, blanket coat, sweater … hard to say what we’d need up there; fall in the mountains could be warm as summer, could be nice and cool, or could slam us with rain, sleet, or even snow. Nights would be freezing for sure.

      Just looking at the snow inching down the mountains every day made me itch to get going. Our cows were up there somewhere. Winter was coming. Pa was ready to give up and sell out. We didn’t have much time.

      Thursday evening after chores, Jasper and I checked off the list we’d agreed on as we sorted through the provisions in the back stall of my barn. Swallows swooped in and out of the diamond window of the hayloft. Willie whined and scratched at a pack-rat hole under a hay bale. Everything was peaceful and calm. Everything but my insides, and probably Jasper’s.

      I tried not to show how nervous I was, so I grinned at him as we checked off the last items: flashlights and extra batteries. “We’re really doing it!”

      “Yep,” Jasper nodded. “Day after tomorrow, we’ll be gone. You excited?”

      “’Course I am. It’ll be fun, a piece of cake.” I said it, but didn’t entirely mean it. I had more than a few worries. Would just we two kids really be able to keep track of the herd? What if they got spooked and scattered? What if one of the horses tripped and broke a leg? Still, I kept my fears to myself—a plan was a plan.

      I tried to sound confident. “I remember exactly where we left the cows last spring. There’s so much grazing in those meadows, I doubt they’ve have wandered far. The calves can’t cover a whole long distance, anyway.”

      I went on, remembering the spring cattle drive. “We’ll ride on the highway for a mile or so, just to Gable Creek, then about five miles to where the road cuts off to Black Snake Mine.” I untied the baling twine around my sleeping bag and rerolled it tighter.

      Jasper picked up the trail I was following in my head: “Then past the old gold mine. Do you think we’d have time to dig around there a little? Maybe we’d find some nuggets they missed….” Gold flecks sparkled in Jasper’s eyes when he talked about it.

      “Maybe one of your ancestors was a miner, Jas. You sure do get excited about gold.”

      “Remember the field trip to the Blue Bucket Mine? Remember the gold I found?”

      “That little flake? I remember how you got in trouble for ditching the group and scratching around in the pile of tailings by the creek. Boy was Mrs. B. mad. She was about ready to get up a search party you’d been gone so long.”

      Jasper smiled. “Yeah, maybe I’m a miner at heart. But if we stop at the Black Snake on the way to find the cows, I might find a big nugget! Then we could buy our own ranch and cows and….”

      At first, I shook my head. His eyes lowered in disappointment. I felt bad; after all, he was helping me. I added, “Maybe just a short break. If we spend all Saturday poking around that old mine, we’ll never find the herd before dark. Besides, if there was any gold left, someone would have found it by now.”

      “Entonces….” Jasper nodded slowly in agreement, but rubbed his hands together like a greedy villain in a movie.

      We both laughed.

      I found the cook kit in the pile; one pot and a wooden spoon, still crusty from our last camping trip. I scraped it with my thumbnail and smelled it; cheese?

      “We’re eating mostly cold food, jerky and pemmican, right?”

      “You mean that dried fruitcake stuff? Sure,” he said, “it’s what the mountain men ate, right? Didn’t hurt them not to have eggs and flapjacks every morning.”

      A 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.”