“That’s some sky,” said Leila, zipping up her jacket and sitting down.
“I never saw anything like this in LA.”
“Did you meet any movie stars?”
Paley crunched on her last piece of bacon. “No. It’s not really like that where I grew up.”
They could hear voices and an occasional thud from inside the boys’ bunkhouse.
“Hey, Madison,” Leila called inside, “can we go tack up?”
Their trainer poked her head out the door. “Sure thing, girls. I’ll catch up with you.” As the door closed, they could hear her trying again to rouse Sundee. “Come on! If you don’t get moving, you’ll have to stay and muck stalls.”
“Think she’ll make it?” asked Leila, as the two girls headed for the barn.
“Yeah,” said Paley. “She might like to sleep, but she doesn’t like mucking stalls.”
Dumpling and Hot Tamale—the real early birds—led the rest of the flock out of the chicken coop. Cameron was the only one in the barn. His brown and white pinto mare stood placidly munching grain while he brushed her. He started talking as soon as he saw them.
“Did you know that Paul’s dogs know ten different whistled commands?”
“Really?” Paley asked, opening Prince’s stall.
“Yeah. Isn’t that cool?” When Cameron wasn’t riding or weeding or playing chess with Mr. Bridle, he shadowed Paul, asking a thousand questions about ranching.
Prince nickered his good morning to Paley as she measured out his grain and gave him a little alfalfa. She stroked his neck and leaned into his flank. “Good morning, Your Majesty.”
Before long, the rest of the crew joined them. Even Ma Etty and Mr. Bridle were going on this expedition. Everyone got a set of saddlebags to add to their horse’s tack, and Ma Etty passed out lunch bags and water bottles. “Sunscreen?” she asked, checking in with each kid. “Towel? Swimsuit?”
Paley stowed her gear in Prince’s saddlebags and tucked a few extra horse treats into her pocket. Today was wide open with possibilities.
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They followed Bridlemile Road deep into the heart of the ranch. When it veered off toward the west, Mr. Bridle led the way along a smaller path that led to the butte. After a few hours, they were on public lands, and the trail widened, making it possible for them to ride two by two.
The Bridles rode together at the front. Fletch brought up the rear. Paley nudged Prince into a trot until she was even with Madison and Snow White. “How much farther?”
The trainer pointed ahead to where there was a break in the ridgeline. “The lake is right through there. You’re going to love it. I wish it didn’t take so long to get out here. I would swim in the lake every day if I could.”
Bryce had caught up with them. He and Madison fell into conversation about open water swimming versus pool swimming, and Paley zoned out, letting Prince slow his pace and grab a few mouthfuls of grass. Here the landscape was more wild. There was a spicy, fruity smell that she couldn’t identify. A flash of movement in the aspens on one side of the trail caught her eye, and Paley turned in time to see a doe and her fawn leap away.
Nothing could be farther from LA—or farther from the Misery Marshes, for that matter. Paley found herself thinking less and less often about the Blue Elf or about the dragon’s egg. Sure, she still wanted to fly, but there was time for that—plenty of time. Her days with Prince were numbered.
“I’m ready for that swim,” said Leila, urging Cupcake forward. “It’s getting really hot.”
Paley grinned at her. “Me, too!”
“Should we ask Ma Etty if we can trot?”
Paley nodded. That was a great idea! They’d been working on trotting in the arena for the last week. Prince loved it. The faster, the better!
When they topped the next rise, Paley could see a sloping meadow stretched out between them and the shore of a glittering, turquoise lake. Ma Etty nudged her horse into a trot and the rest of them followed. The world around Paley turned into a blur of color, and laughter bubbled out of her. High on Prince’s back, she felt like she could conquer the world.
When they reached the water, Ma Etty asked them to let the horses drink. Paley soaked in the sparkling day with Bryce on one side of her and Leila on the other. As everyone caught their breath, the quiet of the mountain lake was replaced by cheerful chatter. Paley wished the day could go on forever.
“Yay! Lunch!” said Leila, swinging down from Cupcake’s back. “I’m starving.”
The girls pulled their lunches out of their saddlebags. Ma Etty and Fletch spread out two picnic blankets. Leila, Paley, and Sundee sat on the red gingham one, and the boys joined them.
“What’s this?” Mr. Bridle said, when he came over carrying his own sack lunch. “You young whippersnappers are taking my favorite blanket.”
The kids exchanged nervous glances. Cameron started to get up, but Mr. Bridle chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. “Just kidding, young man. At ease. At ease.” Mr. Bridle joined Ma Etty, Fletch, and Madison on the other picnic blanket. “I love these guys,” he told Ma Etty. “They’re good kids.”
Lots of tiny wrinkles crinkled up around Ma Etty’s eyes when she smiled at him. “The horses think so, too!”
“And we both know that horses are excellent judges of character,” Mr. Bridle replied.
Paley watched Prince nibble grass at the edge of the lake and felt that warm, connected feeling return. Mr. Magnificent sensed her watching and tipped his nose in the air. Who needed LA movie stars when you had a horse like Prince?
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After lunch, the kids and Madison swam.
The first plunge into the cold mountain lake took Paley’s breath away. She broke through the surface with her heart pounding in her chest and scrambled out onto a sun-warmed rock. Goosebumps rose on her arms and legs.
“What?” Bryce protested. “Giving up already?”
“It’s cold!” Paley panted.
“You’ll get used to it.”
He and Madison took off in a swimming race across the lake, and Paley dove back in, splashing Sundee and Leila. She swam until her teeth started chattering and then dried off.
Ma Etty was reading. Mr. Bridle was snoring quietly, his cowboy hat tipped over his face. Paul and Cameron were working with the cattle dogs. The horses grazed together next to the glittering lake.
“It’s like a travel brochure,” Paley said to Leila, who sat next to her with her hair wrapped in a towel.
“I don’t ever want to leave,” Leila said, tipping her face toward the sun.
Paley’s sparkle factor went down a few notches. “Ugh. Don’t talk about that.”
“You know,” said Leila, propping herself up on her elbow and looking at Paley, “we can get together when we’re back in Denver.”
Paley grinned at her. “Seriously? That would be amazing!” She squeezed the excess water out of her braid. “But let’s not talk about the end of summer. We’ve still got three and a half more weeks.”
“Deal.”
“Do you want to go exploring?” Paley asked, pulling a shirt over her swimsuit.
Sundee perked up. “I brought my geology stuff. There’s a really interesting sedimentary formation over there.” She pointed to the far side of the lake.
The eroded ridge of rock reminded Paley of a decaying layer cake, neither appetizing nor ripe for exploring, but she was in a good mood and the moldy cake was an excuse to walk around the lake in the sunshine. “Let’s go.”
“Did you reapply your sunscreen?” Ma Etty called as they got ready to go.
Leila waved a tube of SPF 30, and they took off, following a small game trail that meandered along the shoreline. Wildflowers bloomed on all sides. The day’s soundtrack was all buzzy bees and the swish of grass and the voices of the others skittering over the water.
They left the trail and climbed uphill to the formation that Sundee wanted to inve
stigate. The edge of it was slowly crumbling away. The base was littered with broken-off chunks of rock. Scree, Sundee called it. Paley’s boots slipped and grated against the gravel as she climbed to the more stable top of the formation.
About the size of the horse arena, the rocky ledge stretched north away from the lake, ending in a steep cliff that overlooked the valley beyond. Here and there a few plants grew out of cracks in the rock, but mostly it was bare.
“Be careful of the edge,” Sundee warned. “This sedimentary rock is not very stable. The lip could crumble.”
“Okay, Mom,” said Leila, wandering back into the meadow to make a daisy chain.
Sundee pulled out her rock hammer, broke off a chunk, and peered at it with the hand lens hanging around her neck on a cord. “Look at that grain size,” she muttered and scribbled something in a notebook.
Paley stared off the edge of the cliff. Down below, cattle grazed near a patch of aspens. Two hawks soared back and forth in matched spirals. When they turned their backs to the sun, she could see how their golden-brown feathers gave way to a deep brick red.
Paley sat down on the rock and watched them, feeling the same calm that came over her when she and Prince were really in tune. It was like she was a part of everything. She’d fallen into the web of the place—wind on her face, sun on her back, horses at the ready. She ran her fingers over the surface of the rock, exploring all the little nooks and crannies. Absently, she hooked her fingers under a tiny ridge of rock and tugged. A slab about the size of a textbook gave way and came loose in her hands.
Paley turned the slab of rock over and over in her hands. It was a pale gray that reminded her of the pottery unit in her arts class back in LA. They’d started with hand-thrown platters and moved on to more complex, wheel-thrown projects. It had been satisfying to watch something take shape out of nothing. That was one of the things she liked about playing Dragonfyre, too. When you started the game, you had next to nothing—basic weapons, a leather vest, a tiny bag of gold coins. But if you kept playing, if you got good, you built an empire.
If only real life was so straightforward.
Paley hurled the slab of rock off the edge of the cliff and watched it whirligig through the air. When it smashed against the boulders below, it exploded in a whitish cloud of dust. Paley wedged her fingers under another lip of loose rock. It wiggled, but didn’t come free. She squatted to get more leverage and pulled harder. A dinner-plate-sized piece cracked off. She hurled that one too, even farther than the last. As she watched it fall, the rumble of engine noise filtered up from below.
She’d know that Jeep anywhere.
When it pulled to a stop directly beneath her, Paley wasn’t one bit surprised to see Thomas Goodstein get out and stare up at her. He didn’t speak. Instead, he raised two fingers to his eyes then pointed them straight at her. His meaning was as clear as the mountain lake. I’m watching you. He and the other boys with him spread a map on the hood of the Jeep. After peering at it for a few minutes, they jumped back in the vehicle and roared off, leaving tire tracks crushed into the field of wildflowers.
Paley hefted the chunk of rock in her hands and threw it after the retreating vehicle. She missed by a mile. Stupid Thomas. Who did he think he was, giving her the stink-eye? She was still stewing when she noticed a dark bit of rock against the lighter stuff. Paley touched it and bent closer. At first the new rock had looked black, but now she could see that it was shot through with red and felt a little bumpy, like the skin of a mandarin orange.
Paley wedged her fingernails under the light rock and pulled up another chunk, revealing more of the dark rock. There was a lot of it buried under there. The shape of it made her curious. It wasn’t jagged, but neither was it round like a river stone. The edge of it swooped like a frozen wave. It sent prickly feelings up and down her spine.
That meant something. But what?
Paley wanted to see more of it, but the covering layer of gray stone was no longer budging. “Hey, Sundee,” she called, “come check this out.”
As soon as Sundee saw what Paley was pointing to, she began to bounce up and down on the balls of her feet. “Is that a coal deposit? That could be valuable.” She sprinted forward and knelt next to Paley.
“Ohmygosh, ohmygosh,” she twittered, waving her hands wildly. Paley stared at her. Sundee looked like she was about to twitch out of her skin.
“Is everything okay?” Leila called from down below. She had a daisy chain looped around her head.
“You’re not going to believe this!” Sundee squealed, waving for Leila to hurry up and join them.
“What is wrong with you?” asked Paley. “It’s just a rock.”
“Just a rock?!” Paley thought Sundee’s eyes might pop right out of her head and roll off the cliff. “It’s not just a rock!” she shrieked. “It’s bone! It’s bone!”
“You don’t have to say everything twice,” said Leila, plopping down beside Paley. “Get a grip. Besides, bone is white, not black.”
“Not if it’s a fossil! Give me some space. I’ve got to clear away more of this shale.” Sundee waggled her hands at them until they backed up, and then went to work with the rock hammer she carried. Flake by flake she chipped at the gray rock, blowing on it. As Paley watched, the shape emerged from the rock. First a long, narrow piece. Then another chunk, at a sharp angle to the first—a triangular section that seemed slicker and shinier than the others.
Sundee chipped off more gray rock and used her handkerchief to clean off a layer of dust. When everything was clean, her shoulders began to tremble. “You guys—” she whispered. Paley leaned closer. What she saw made her tremble, too. Never in a million years would she have expected this.
Embedded in the rock was an enormous tooth.
Chapter Fifteen
The Bridles practically had to drag Sundee back to the ranch. She would have chipped away at the fossil all night, and the rest of the kids would have stayed with her happily. They had agreed it must be a dinosaur tooth, based on the size. Back at the ranch, Paley paced around the kitchen of the big house. “I can’t believe it!”
Sundee was giddy. “I know! We could be famous!”
“This is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me,” said Bryce. “I wonder if it’s a T. rex.”
“Or a velociraptor!” suggested Paley.
Sundee ran her fingers through her long, dark hair. “Ma Etty will probably let me do some online research. I want to see if there are any other known deposits in the area. I wonder if they’ve been carbon dated.” Paley loved it whenever Sundee dropped into full geology geek mode. She didn’t understand half the things Sundee was talking about, but the intensity reminded her of being so absorbed in Dragonfyre that it became reality.
Leila and Ma Etty returned from using the phone in the back office.
“Did you get through?” asked Paley, and Leila gave her the thumbs-up.
Leila’s dad worked at the natural history museum in Denver. He wasn’t a scientist or anything, but he did fundraising for them and planned big fancy parties for rich people in tuxedos, so he knew a lot of the scientists. She was pretty sure he could get them in touch with the head paleontologist at the museum.
“So,” Leila said, pouring herself a glass of lemonade and sitting down between Paley and Bryce. “My dad said that he would contact Dr. Moore. If it’s as big as we say—which, duh, it is—then it is probably very important.”
“Yay!” said Paley.
“But—” Ma Etty interrupted, “he also said that we shouldn’t excavate it any further.”
“Why?!” Paley protested.
Sundee waved her hands around even more wildly. “Of course. Of course. They have to see it in situ. The context is so important to the science. I should have thought of that. I can’t believe I kept digging.”
Leila made a grumpy face at her. “Stop freaking out.”
“What’s in situ?” Bryce asked.
Ma Etty looked amused by all their hub
bub. “It means ‘in its place.’ Scientists can learn a lot about a fossil by studying the way the bones are configured and what kind of rock surrounds them. Leila’s dad is going to call us back. The museum people may want to make a trip out here and check it out. Maybe even do a professional excavation.”
“Maybe?” asked Paley. “What if they don’t? Then do we dig it up ourselves?”
Ma Etty’s lips pursed. “I’m afraid not. There are laws against that kind of thing.”
The kitchen exploded in protests.
“But we found it!”
“We can’t just leave it there!”
“It’s ours!”
The older woman held up her hands. “Whoa, horsies. First things first. Let’s find out if and when the paleontologist is coming out.” The kids huffed into their lemonades. “I need all of you to help with dinner,” Ma Etty continued. “Paley and Leila, can you set the table? Bryce, you’re on salad duty. Sundee, potatoes need peeling. Cameron, can you go pick tomatoes?”
Grumbling, the kids went to work. Paley kept pausing, one hand on the forks in the utensil drawer, to daydream about the glimpse of skull. Not a dragon. Not a monster. Not a made-up creature. Long ago those sharp teeth had gnashed and clashed right here on Quartz Creek Ranch. Paley wanted to know everything about it. She wanted to turn back time and watch her dinosaur lumber through the thick vegetation of the Jurassic.
Leila nudged her. “Get moving, will ya?”
“Sorry.” Paley followed Leila around the table, setting forks on napkins. “I just can’t stop thinking about the dinosaur.”
“Maybe Dr. Moore will bring out some of that imaging equipment,” said Sundee. “You know, the kind that does underground radar detection.”
Leila clinked her handful of silverware. “There might be more fossils.”
“Oh, cool!” said Paley. “What if there is a whole herd of dinosaurs in the butte?”
One Brave Summer (Quartz Creek Ranch) Page 8