Gypsy Gold

by Terri Farley

  Sam leaned a bit farther right, to catch the sheriff’s reaction to Nicolas’s sarcasm.

  “Of course not,” the sheriff said. “I know gypsies aren’t all thieves and fortune-tellers.”

  Nicolas raised an eyebrow.

  He was doing it again, Sam thought. First he’d misjudged her and Jen, thinking they were stereotyping him, when they hadn’t even known he was a gypsy. Now, he’d sized up Sheriff Ballard’s shaggy gray hair and droopy mustache, and decided the small-town lawman was small-minded, too.

  Sam wanted to warn Nicolas, but when she leaned even farther to the right, she caught her breath as she started to slip. Jake reached back to stop her fall, and luckily Nicolas didn’t need her help.

  Although Sheriff Ballard’s gaze narrowed for a minute, he understood Nicolas’s reaction and explained, “A ring of horse thieves has been operating in this area, and a representative of the Bureau of Land Management asked me to detain you.”

  Sam knew it had been Norman White, but Nicolas’s glare hit Sam as hard as a slap.

  Not me, she thought, then realized Nicolas must think Brynna had notified the sheriff.

  Sheriff Ballard had caught the look, too. Realizing Nicolas had come to a faulty conclusion, the sheriff said, “The call was something about a dun colt, but the…gentleman who left the message was pretty darn vague.”

  “I thought you were helping me out, Sheriff,” Linc Slocum whined like a second grader. “What with their trespassing and—”

  “Norman White was just over at River Bend, talking to Nicolas,” Jen began. “He let him go.”

  Jake inclined his head as if looking down at his mare’s hooves, but Sam heard him say, “Tell ’im.”

  Tell him what? Jake and Jen didn’t know Norman had alerted the sheriff to Nicolas after talking to Brynna, but before meeting Nicolas.

  But Jake and Jen had been there when Norman had been unable to come up with a reason to keep Nicolas from leaving.

  “My dad and Brynna are on their way after us,” Sam said. “They were standing right there when Mr. White said Nicolas could leave if the colt stayed behind.”

  “That so?” Sheriff Ballard asked, but Linc interrupted once more.

  “Don’t tell me you’re the sort of sheriff who won’t keep track of drifters! What about homeland security? At least you have to make him explain what kind of jibber-jabber he was talking this morning!”

  As if he were completely bored with the proceedings, Nicolas reached into the wagon behind him.

  Jake tensed in the saddle before her, but Sam couldn’t tell if it was because Sheriff Ballard had straightened, taking offense at Linc’s advice, or because Nicolas suddenly twisted around and reached into his wagon.

  Should he be doing that? Sam thought it looked kind of suspicious.

  If the sheriff hadn’t thought Nicolas was innocent, he probably would have told him to stop. But he didn’t.

  When Nicolas drew out his violin and played “Pop Goes the Weasel,” Linc began making a wordless protest.

  “Linc sounds like an old car trying to start,” Jake muttered.

  The sheriff only laughed.

  After a few seconds, Nicolas laid the violin across his knees. “Sheriff, I don’t know what kind of trouble he’s in—”

  “Me! Why, kid, if you’ve got nothing to hide, what are you afraid of?” Linc shouted.

  Witch started sideways at the sound and Sam grabbed onto Jake, but he simply rested his hand on the mare’s neck and she settled down.

  The sheriff tried to do the same with Linc.

  “You’ve said your piece,” the sheriff hushed him.

  Still mumbling, Linc crossed his arms over his broad belly, leaned back against the front of his champagne-gold Jeep, and glared at Nicolas.

  “I apologize for this mix-up,” the sheriff told Nicolas, “but as I mentioned, we’ve had some horse theft around here. I’d like to take a quick look in your wagon; then you can be on your way.”

  “I’m sorry, too, but you’ve got no cause to search through my things, and until you do, I’ll have to say no,” Nicolas said smoothly.

  “Hey, I know,” Jen said suddenly. She urged Silly forward a few steps and turned the palomino to face Lace and Nicolas. “Just show him your journal. You didn’t know you would be stopped, so you’d have no reason to have fabricated any entries, and it tells where you were every day, and you weren’t anyplace near here when Shy Boots and Hotspot were stolen!”

  “Is that so?” the sheriff asked and his apparent willingness to go along with Jen’s genius idea swayed Nicolas from his stubbornness.

  “I could do that,” Nicolas said, smiling at Jen.

  Nicolas said a word to Lace before jumping down from the driver’s seat.

  It must have meant something like “stay,” Sam guessed, because Lace didn’t take a step while Nicolas strode to the back of his wagon. When Sheriff Ballard followed him and Linc crowded close, the mare only swung her heavy head around to watch.

  Sam wasn’t half so patient. “Go,” she hissed at Jake.

  With a long-suffering sigh, he rode Witch after the others.

  “You know you’re just as curious as I am,” Sam muttered, but Jake didn’t say a word, just guided the mare into place so that they had a good view of what was happening.

  Nicolas reached in and grabbed the journal he’d shown Sam and Jen the night before, but when he opened its cover, they all saw a thick pad of dollar bills.

  So that’s where he kept his money, Sam thought, and she realized he must have hidden it somewhere else when he’d shared his journal with them. That shouldn’t hurt her feelings. He’d had no reason to trust them, then.

  “Ah ha! Look at that big wad of cash!” Linc crowed. “What are you doing with all this money? Next you’re gonna say that gypsies don’t believe in banks!”

  Jake leaned back against the saddle cantle and shook his head.

  “His foolishness still catch you napping sometimes?” Jake asked Sam.

  Sam was about to call Linc something worse than foolish, when Nicolas calmly countered the millionaire’s remark.

  “That’s true for some folks of my great-grandparents’ generation,” Nicolas said, “but I have a more practical reason. There’s a shortage of ATMs where Lace and I go.”

  He handed his journal to the sheriff and Sheriff Ballard opened the volume at about its midpoint. Looking down from Witch’s back, Sam had just noticed it was written in the sibling code Nicolas had told her and Jen about, when Linc’s eyes bulged and he came out with a strangled gasp before sputtering, “W-what’s that written in? It’s some terrorist language, isn’t it?”

  Nicolas’s single bark of laughter said more clearly than words what he thought of Linc Slocum. Then he turned grinning to the sheriff and confided, “It’s shorthand.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Brynna and Dad drove up as Sheriff Ballard began paging through Nicolas’s journal. Spotting them, Linc must have sensed things were about to go even more downhill for him, because he slapped his palms against his legs and edged toward his car.

  “I’ve done what I can of my civic duty, so I’ll be—”

  “Keep us company a minute more, Linc,” Sheriff Ballard said without looking up. Though it was phrased as a request, the sheriff hadn’t offered Linc a choice.

  Dad climbed out of his new truck and hurried to open the passenger’s door for Brynna. He helped her down and for once, she accepted.

  When Sam thought what a long, tiring day it had been for her, she knew it had been even harder for Brynna.

  But it was Dad who yawned.

  “’Scuse me,” he said, covering his mouth. “I was hopin’ for a nap after that blue mustang danced me all around the corral this morning, but we’ve had a little excitement over at our place.”

  Holding his place in the journal, the sheriff met Dad’s eyes and made a vague gesture toward Nicolas.

  But Dad shook his head. “Linc shot my dog.”


  The words seemed suspended in the afternoon air. Lace leaned forward against her harness and the creaking of leather was the only sound.

  “I didn’t kill no dog,” Linc snapped.

  “Blaze is alive, but I just finished patching him up,” Brynna said.

  “That’s a mite different from what you told me,” Sheriff Ballard said to Linc.

  “See here, Sheriff—” Linc began, but then he must have heard the rude jab of his words, because he adjusted them. “I mean, you know what I told you. Coyotes have been all over my property and who knows what they’re up to. I did shoot one, but…”

  Brynna squared her shoulders, and though she still wore her bright blue sundress, Sam saw her stepmother shift into biologist mode.

  “What coyotes are ‘up to’ this time of year, is teaching their pups how to find food so they can live on their own. The pups are small, and it would be pretty surprising if they started out by hunting your half-grown calves. Still, if you do have a problem with coyotes, there are better ways to discourage them.”

  Linc made a blustering noise, but Brynna didn’t let him cut in.

  “They don’t like loud noises. Car horns, air guns, even yelling works pretty well. And rather than hang their carcasses on your barbed wire, as I hear you may already have done, try marking the edge of your property with simple ammonia. That works much better.”

  “There’s nothing illegal about what I did,” Linc insisted. “I’m in the clear on this one.”

  “Let’s get a couple things straight,” said Sheriff Ballard. “Coyote hunting is permitted in Nevada. They’re not a protected species.”

  “There, y’see?” Linc gloated.

  “That doesn’t mean you can discharge a rifle in a congested area or shoot dogs for no good reason,” Sheriff finished.

  “A congested area!” Linc yelped. “We were out on the godforsaken range!”

  “Your definition of ‘godforsaken’ is mighty peculiar, Linc. By your own admission, there were two juveniles, a minor—you’re not twenty-one yet, are you?” he asked Nicolas. “And some pretty valuable livestock within rifle range.”

  “Lace is a Gypsy Vanner,” Jen recited once more. “One of only about a hundred in the entire country.”

  “So you’ll be getting a citation for discharging a weapon in a congested area,” he said, then turned toward Dad, “and you’ll get one for letting a dog run at large.”

  Dad’s jaw dropped in surprise, but he managed to ask, “There’s a leash law?”

  “No sir, but your pets have to be under voice control.”

  “Fair enough,” Dad said.

  Sam was just thinking how she admired Dad’s acceptance of his punishment, compared to Linc’s whining, when Linc chuckled. At Dad.

  “Now, if you Forsters want to press charges against Mr. Slocum for animal cruelty, you can,” the sheriff added.

  “But that dog was running with the coyotes! If he’d stuck with his own kind, I wouldn’t have mistaken him for one of ’em!”

  “Wait. You said you were protecting him from the coyote,” Jen said.

  “Blaze is black with a white ruff around his neck,” Sam added. “He looks nothing like a coyote. We’re going to go get his son, so he’ll be safe, too.”

  “Sam,” Brynna said quietly, “Sheriff Ballard can handle this.”

  “You all can tell it to the judge,” Sheriff Ballard said. “He might levy fines or lecture the shooter and order him to get some glasses. Now, anyone have questions?”

  “Isn’t it illegal for them to catch that coydog?” Linc asked.

  “Interesting you should bring that up, Linc, because I checked it out after you called me this mornin’, and according to NAC 503.140, they don’t need a Division of Wildlife license or permit to possess a wolf or coyote hybrid.”

  After that, Linc gave up and drove home, but the sheriff asked Nicolas if he would delay his trip just one more day.

  “Norman White accepted his word on the dun colt,” Brynna said carefully.

  “That’s because Norman sicced me on him,” the sheriff snapped.

  When he returned the journal, Nicolas took it with both hands and a sigh.

  “I wish I could read that.” Brynna didn’t ask permission, but merely pointed at the journal with a wistful expression. “I’m still charged with finding out what happened to the colt. If I found the herder who saw the colt hanging around his sheep, he might give me some clues.”

  Nicolas’s hands moved over the journal as if he was considering handing it over.

  “Mr. Raykov, here’s my situation. Clues are what I’m after as well,” Sheriff Ballard said. “Sam was instrumental in bringing in Flick—one of the horse rustlers I mentioned—and he’s tipped us off to a place we can trap Karl Mannix, another bad one. Now, Flick doesn’t mind rolling over on both Karl and Linc, but he hasn’t given me enough evidence to place Slocum under arrest.”

  “I don’t see where I come into this,” Nicolas said, “but I’m willing to help.”

  “I wouldn’t smear your reputation or nothin’,” the sheriff began.

  “Which means you would.” Nicolas laughed. He leaned against Lace, threaded his fingers through her black-and-white mane, and worked at a tangle before looking up with a resigned expression. “Still, a little slander this far from home, so my parents won’t hear it, probably won’t hurt me.”

  Seeing that Nicolas and the sheriff were about to reach a compromise, Jen swung into Silly’s saddle. When Jen glanced toward the sky as if judging the time, Sam reminded herself that Jen had left home three days ago and her family didn’t know she was safely off the mountain and back in familiar territory.

  “Here’s all I want to do,” the sheriff said. “Hint, for just twenty-four hours, that you’re a ‘person of interest’ in this horse-rustling case. Then, I sit back and hope Linc will do something stupid.”

  “I’ve already blown my schedule,” Nicolas said regretfully. “I might as well do a good deed in the process.”

  Jen wasn’t so eager to get home that she didn’t have time for another clever idea.

  “I know,” Jen said, pointing at Nicolas. “When we were looking at your map, you figured a two-day detour around Darton. If you had a police escort, you could go right through the center of town.”

  “Brilliant!” Sam said as Jen turned her smile on Sheriff Ballard.

  “You got yourself a deal,” he said. “We’ll call it a contribution to cultural diversity or something like that, shall we?”

  Nicolas gave the new plan a thumbs-up in the same instant that Brynna fell asleep. Still standing, she slouched against Dad.

  “I’ve seen a horse do that,” Sam whispered, “but never a person.”

  When her stepmother sagged and her knees buckled, Dad wrapped his arms around her and guided her back to the truck.

  Once she was tucked inside, still asleep, Dad turned to Sam.

  “It’s not easy being Brynna,” he said. He stood with one hand on the driver’s door of the truck and wore an understanding smile. “She works hard to do everything just right. That’s why I’m putting her to bed early and forcing her to sleep late. And woe to whoever wakes her up, got it?”

  “I guess you’re talking to me,” Sam said, and then, since Dad wore such a sweet expression, she added, “Tomorrow’s a holiday for me, too, so mostly I’ll spend it studying, except first thing in the morning when Jake and I are going to take Blaze out to look for his son.”

  She held her breath, waiting for something to go wrong. Dad could demand she be sensible or Jake could ask what the heck she was talking about. She crossed the fingers on both of her hands and waited.

  “I don’t know what we’ll do with him once you’ve brought him back,” Dad said, “but I hate to see a young animal suffer if he wants help. You okay with this, Jake?”

  Sitting behind Jake, Sam couldn’t see his face. Though only a few seconds passed, it took him forever to say, “Sure.”

  Then, witho
ut turning around to face her, just as if they’d discussed the details earlier, he agreed to meet Sam at the river before dawn.

  “That’s all fine. ’Til then, though, you’re coming with me.” Dad was talking to her, but he looked pointedly at Witch until Sam threw her leg over the horse’s tail and slid to the ground. “You can squeeze in next to Brynna,” Dad told her, “and maybe I can save your neck for one more day.”

  It turned out to be the quietest night Sam remembered since she’d come home to River Bend Ranch.

  After supper, Nicolas pulled his vardo up close enough to the barn that he could watch Lace and the dun colt in the big loose box stall.

  As a faint drizzle fell, Gram brought Nicolas some Mexican hot chocolate. Sam went with her, then sat near the barn doorway on a bale of fresh straw, petting Blaze as she listened to the hissing rain and the sound of Gram making friends with Nicolas.

  “I’m sure you’ve got all you need out here,” Gram said. “But I think hot chocolate’s especially nice when it rains.”

  The muted melodies that Nicolas played on his violin lured horses to the fence of the ten-acre pasture. Nicolas enjoyed Gram’s ranch tales as much as the animals liked his music. As Gram told of spring and fall cattle drives, when her parents would load her siblings and cousins into caravan wagons much like his vardo, and take them way up from the ranch and into the little valley, Sam tried to picture Gram as a child. Had girls worn jeans in those days or were they still expected to dress in skirts? Had she worn her long hair in braids or twisted up in a knot as she wore it now?

  “What did you do there?” Nicolas asked. He’d stopped playing to sample the cinnamon-spiced cocoa.

  “Our buckaroos drove the cattle up in the summer and brought them down in the fall. We were just taken along to frolic beside this glass-clear stream.” Gram chuckled. “I suppose it figures that most of all I remember the food! One spring we had a cook, who’d been a Sister of Charity. Don’t ask me why she was no longer a nun. I was too young to wonder. But oh what that woman could do to sweet pink beans with wild onions and corn cakes cooked on a big black griddle. She set the men to catching trout at night and didn’t waste a single minute between the stream and the frying pan. We wanted to stay up there all summer long,” Gram said.